Amy Hart
I was tuned into yet another spontaneously scheduled program on Zoom called "You're Going to Die," an open mic on the conversation of Death and Dying." A program, like many others, that used to be performed before a live audience of humans gathered closely together in an intimate theater or cafe, and now is being shared at a safe social distance online. The host, Ned Buskirk, accidently called the virus "Co-Void." And isn't that true.
There is a great void right now, and we all co-exist in it. Everyone on planet Earth is in this Co-Void. Absolutely everyone.
And in this void, there is more closeness than ever before, in so many ways. Now that we are devoid of work, devoid of business and busy-ness, devoid of driving and rushing and eating out and getting there on time, devoid of traveling and big adventures, and endless obligations and distractions, devoid of the chase for something called Life...Now, stopped in our tracks, we are finding Life- — in the Co-Void.
In our empty schedules, our empty calendars, our empty toilet paper shelves, and even in our empty paychecks — in this great void, we are co-discovering a new fullness together. Finding closeness in the requisite distance. Sharing "poetry and prose and everything goes" — as Buskirk likes to say — as we meander through the softened hours.
Thank you for sharing the Co-Void, you wise ones who know Death and Mortality is a topic too rich to silence or ignore — even at a time like this, when the world is halted by the threat of death too widespread to comprehend — thank you for filling the void always with your life -— which is going to end someday, I assure you, but not tonight. Not right now.
Right now, we get to traverse the great void together. Thanks to you. Thanks to us. Thanks to everyone — in the great Co-Void.
Amy Hart, a former Averill Park resident, lives in California. She read a version of this article on the online program You're Going to Die." http://www.yg2d.com
Amy Hart